Advantages to bidding at the last minute: Don't have to worry about unscrupulous sellers shilling your proxy.

Don't have to watch your early proxy get nibbled to death by indecisive one-increment-at-a-time bidders who can't make up their minds how much something is worth to them.

Don't have to worry about being used as a personal shopper by rival collectors who use your recent bid history as a search engine to find good stuff themselves. Let 'em do their own legwork.

Don't have to commit yourself to an auction by bidding early, then find a better one later, or change your mind for some reason. Just put items you are interested in on your watch list & use the time to research, think, ask the seller any questions, comparison shop elsewhere. If you change your mind, or your circumstances change in the meantime (get laid off? car dies?) you won't be stuck committed to that early bid.

You know right away if you won or lost. You don’t have to sweat it out for days wondering if your early proxy will make it, or should you raise that bid, or was that really the widget you want.

Learn to work out in your own mind the absolute most you would ever pay for that widget, no matter what. This should be high enough that you know for sure you would never, ever want to raise your bid, but still what you would pay if necessary. Do whatever comparison shopping, research & thinking you need to do before you bid. This is your true maximum bid & it is the heart & soul of winning on ebay.

Bid that true max at any time you feel comfortable, preferably the last few seconds. You'll know immediately if you win or lose. If you win, you grin. If not, you at least know you lost ONLY because the winner was truly willing to pay more than you ever would. You are free to move on the next auction & won't have the "shoulda-woulda-coulda's" afterwards.

by old_sniping_floozy